


The Battle's Done And We Kind Of Won So We'll Sound Our Victory Cheer

by creatureofhobbit



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-01
Updated: 2013-07-01
Packaged: 2017-12-16 19:44:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,392
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/865878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/creatureofhobbit/pseuds/creatureofhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Mystic Falls High graduating class, plus Jeremy, reflect on what the future holds for them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Battle's Done And We Kind Of Won So We'll Sound Our Victory Cheer

**Author's Note:**

> Song lyrics in italics are from Buffy's Once More With Feeling.

_Where do we go from here?  
Where do we go from here?  
The battle’s done and we kind of won so we’ll sound our victory cheer  
Where do we go from here? _

On paper, graduation should have been the day of Caroline’s life. Hey, she’d been planning the graduation party practically since the first week of freshman year. She’d been determined that it would all go just as she’d planned it: all her friends together, herself, Matt, Elena, Bonnie and Stefan. Of course, she’d always imagined that Tyler would also be by her side.

Before she’d become a vampire, when Caroline had thought about her future, she’d been planning a career in the media long before that careers evening in junior year when she’d told her mother that and her mother had replied that she’d never even known Caroline to watch the news. When Elena had admitted that she hadn’t sent in her college applications, and Caroline had tried to make her feel better about it by saying that there were a lot of options open to them as vampires, it had suddenly made her think; what was she going to do with her future? The lack of applications wasn’t going to be a major problem; all Elena had to do was compel someone into accepting her. They could repeat college any number of times. But at the same time, Caroline wasn’t going to say this to Elena today, because she knew it wasn’t what she needed to hear right now, but today was just reminding her of the future that she was never going to have. A career in the public eye? Forget it. There were only so many remarks that could be made in the gossip columns about the Botox she was using before it was noticed that she never aged. Now the ceremony was over and Caroline had chance to think about it properly, she realised it was her 18th birthday all over again; another reminder that she was technically dead and stuck at age 17. “The last ceremony of our youth,” she’d said to Bonnie, but it wasn’t. She could technically live to the same age that Klaus was now and even older, and have any number of ceremonies (Stefan had told her that he’d graduated high school several times) and yet they could still be ceremonies of her youth.

She remembered how Vicki Donovan always used to talk about how she just wanted to get the hell out of Mystic Falls, and while Caroline hadn’t taken much notice of her at the time, she now realised that she had no choice but to leave town, to go somewhere she could blend in the crowd. She had all these cities yet to see, after all. Klaus had told her that enough times.

Klaus. Caroline had to admit that she’d never imagined that he would grant Tyler his freedom. But Tyler was on a plane back to Virginia at that very moment, back to Caroline, and that was the way it was going to stay. Screw what Klaus had said about how he was going to be her last love, however long it took. That wasn’t going to happen. Caroline didn’t know where she and Tyler were going to go from here, but she knew that they would go there together.

 

_Why is the path unclear  
When we know home is near? _

Elena and Damon better have a good cover story for this one, Jeremy thought. There had been some interesting cover stories in the past for things that had happened, but he had no idea how they’d possibly explain away the reappearance of someone the whole town knew was supposed to be dead.

He didn’t know where he was going to go from here. For a start, he didn’t even have his childhood home to go to after Elena had set fire to it, and now he was stuck living at the Salvatore house, third wheel to Elena and Damon. There was a part of him that could kind of understand why she’d done it, why she didn’t want the reminders of everyone. But at the same time, it was his home, and Jeremy kind of wished he could go back there.

He was determined he wasn’t going to go back to that place where he’d been at the start of his sophomore year, with the drink and the drugs. But he just didn’t know where he could go. Since everyone in town thought he was dead, school was probably out, not that there was anyone there he was really close to anyway. All the people he hung out with had been in Elena’s year, and as for Damon, well, they were kind of friends but they’d had their moments, and Jeremy didn’t know how they’d get along living together.

Jeremy didn’t feel he could talk to Elena about it. She was just relieved to have him alive again. He couldn’t talk to her about the sacrifice Bonnie had made for him. How was he supposed to do what she’d asked? Wasn’t it just going to hurt Elena, Caroline and Matt more when they found out that not only was Bonnie dead, but that he’d been keeping it from them for all that time? The story about Bonnie spending the summer with her mom could only work for so long before people started wondering why she wasn’t taking their calls, or someone spoke to Abby and found out she wasn’t with her. And even if he pulled it off for that long, they were going to wonder why she hadn’t come home for college. Jeremy knew he shouldn’t feel that way, not after the way Bonnie had sacrificed herself for him, but there was a part of him that was angry at Bonnie for putting him in that position, for making him lie to their friends, to his own sister.

When Jeremy had come back before, Bonnie had been the one to help him feel some form of normality (certainly more than those strange sites he’d Googled at the time). Of course, he’d screwed that up with the whole Anna and Vicki thing. He realised that now, what he had thrown away, now he didn’t know if he’d have Bonnie’s support through this any more. She could end up going on, like Jenna, and even Anna once she’d met up with Pearl again, and he wouldn’t be able to talk to her again once she was at peace.

If Bonnie was able to come back, maybe Jeremy could get through the summer. But if she didn’t? He didn’t know what was going to happen.

 _Side by side we go hand in hand, though we walk alone in fear  
Tell me, where do we go from here? _  
From the moment Matt had agreed to go travelling with Rebekah, he wondered whether he had made the right decision. (And he had to admit he wasn’t particularly looking forward to his friends’ reaction, considering that the reason he’d ended things with Caroline the year before was because he’d felt he couldn’t deal with her being a vampire, not to mention Rebekah’s role in Elena’s transition.) It was true what he’d told her, just as it had been back then, that he was more comfortable with his love life being a vampire-lite zone. Although in Mystic Falls, that was leaving him with fewer and fewer options.

When he and Vicki were kids, they’d often talked about where they’d go after they finished school. Vicki had always said that she’d get the hell out of Mystic Falls, never looking back, and Matt had had no doubt that she’d do it. That was why he’d believed it when he’d been told that she had, right up until he’d heard that Caroline had found her body. Matt had thought about Vicki at their graduation ceremony, about how she never got to have her big day. That was what made him decide that he’d go with Rebekah; the thought that he was doing it for Vicki, to see everything that she never got the chance to see. He’d live the life that Vicki never got to live, as well as that which he had never lived himself.

And after that, who knew? Maybe he wouldn’t even go back to Mystic Falls. What was there in the town for him, just his old job at the Grill, which who knew, maybe by that time he wouldn’t even want? Matt could hear Vicki’s voice as clearly as if she were standing right next to him, telling him that there was so much more to life than that dump. Now was his chance to find out. It might even be the closest thing he had to a normal life for a long time, which seemed strange, considering who his travelling companion was, but he knew that Rebekah didn’t want to be a vampire and had really tried to live life as a human for a while. Matt thought she could even have succeeded had it not been for her needing to save April’s life, and even then she’d been using her vampire abilities for good purposes.

He just wondered how things would go with Rebekah. He thought she got it when he’d made that comment about not wanting her to get any ideas about turning him so they could live eternal life together, but he still wouldn’t put it past her to try something. But he was going to take the chance anyway. He’d get out there, see what happened. Matt Donovan was done with playing it safe. Rebekah was offering him the chance for a future, and he was gonna take it. And if he didn’t know what was round the corner, well, he could live with that.

 

For the first time in a thousand years, Rebekah finally felt that she could look forward to a future that didn’t involve her brothers. Well, specifically Nik. After a thousand years where he was the most constant thing in her life, she wanted a chance for some space from him and his dramas. (She couldn’t even let herself think about the call she’d had from Elijah asking her if she’d reconsider joining them in New Orleans, where he’d mentioned that the werewolf Hayley was pregnant with Nik’s child. She would have laughed if it hadn’t been a reminder to her of all she had lost. Rebekah had hated being a vampire, would have loved to have had the chance to have children of her own, and here was Nik, expecting a child he didn’t want with a woman he didn’t even like?)

With Nik around, Rebekah had never had the chance to live her own life. Whether it had been Alexander in 1114 or Stefan in 1923, Nik had always been there breathing down her neck, reminding her that she was his. And yet he had not cared for that when he had realised that Elena’s vampirism meant that he would not be able to create more hybrids. (That had not been Rebekah’s intention when she had forced Matt off the road, although once she knew what she had done, she could not say she was sorry.) Now she had the chance to live her life without him, to get to see what a future could be like with “one of the good ones”, as Rebekah had once told Kol that Matt was.

It would be strange seeing the part of Italy again where she had planned her future with Alexander. She had been to Italy in the years since then, but never to that same spot. But it was time to lay that ghost now. Rebekah wasn’t going to get the cure, she knew that now. Her hope of a normal life, the life she had dreamed of when she thought she was going to marry Alexander, was gone now, and it was time that Rebekah accepted that. Maybe being back there would help her do that; she didn’t now.

Of course, it wouldn’t last forever. Matt may have been saying that he had no college plans, but he’d want to go back to Mystic Falls eventually, back to start college, back to his friends, back to the vampire-lite crap which he actually seemed to believe he’d be able to stick to. And Rebekah? Where would she be then?

She didn’t know. But she was determined it wouldn’t involve Niklaus.

_When will “The End” appear?  
When will the trumpets cheer?” _

Bonnie had imagined it many times over the years. Hard not to, when you were best friends with Caroline, who’d been planning for graduation day since Day One. But she’d just always imagined that she’d be celebrating the day alive, able to plan for going to college, maybe even getting that triple room with Caroline and Elena that Caroline had been talking about. And at one time, she’d imagined that Jeremy would have been by her side at graduation.

After the first time Bonnie had resurrected Jeremy, when Sheriff Forbes had shot him, Bonnie had never asked him any questions about what it had been like, being dead. He’d said something about it feeling weird having come back, but Bonnie could understand that, and hadn’t pushed it. At the time, she hadn’t wanted to upset him by asking. And then afterwards, when she’d found out about the whole talking to Anna and Vicki thing, she hadn’t wanted to talk to him at all. Then had come his time in Denver, and for whatever reason, they just never talked about it again. But now, there was a part of Bonnie that sort of wished they’d spoken about it a bit more, then maybe she’d have had some more of an idea of what was coming. And now, with Jeremy back, she could have asked him then, but she didn’t want to, not when there was so much else going on. He needed his time with Elena, and even with their other friends. Plus, if she’d talked to him, he might have told Elena everything. And Bonnie didn’t want that. All her friends had been through enough these last two years, and now they had the chance to enjoy this one last day together. She couldn’t tell them, not now. Bonnie didn’t want to think about what would happen when her friends wondered why she wasn’t returning their calls from her mom’s, or why she wasn’t joining them at college. She couldn’t, not now.

She wondered what fate had in store for her. Would she find peace, like Jeremy and Elena’s aunt Jenna? (Jeremy and Elena had never come out and said so, but Bonnie knew that there was a part of both of them that would have liked the chance to have seen Jenna one more time). Or would she stick around in the same way that Stefan’s friend Lexi had, unable to move on? Being with Grams again, being able to watch over her friends, knowing they were all happy, maybe that would be enough for her. Maybe she would be able to find peace.

But at the same time, she knew it wasn’t really what she wanted. She wanted the triple room with Elena and Caroline, she wanted to share the future that Jeremy now had. And she didn’t know how she would deal with watching from the sidelines, unable to participate. Yet at the same time she thought she would be okay. Because her friends were okay, and that was what mattered.

_The curtains close on a kiss  
God knows, we can tell the end is near  
Where do we go from here? _

 

Elena knew that she would have to apologise properly to everyone she’d hurt during the time she was an emotionless bitch, as she’d put it. She wouldn’t have blamed Caroline and Bonnie if they hadn’t wanted to know her after everything she’d done when her emotions were off.

But now wasn’t the time. She needed to spend as much time as she could with Jeremy and with Alaric while she still could. She had an eternity to talk things through with Caroline, and Bonnie too, and she would. Jeremy hadn’t said anything, but Elena knew that he and Alaric had both been disappointed in the way she’d acted for those few weeks.

Elena didn’t know what the future had in store for her. The day when she’d thought Damon had turned her into a vampire, before Uncle John’s resurrection spell, she’d thought he’d taken her choices away from her. Now she realised that she still had choices, just different ones from the ones she always thought she used to have.

She couldn’t think about college, not quite yet, although she knew that Caroline was right in that she had plenty of choices. She needed to get back to being proper Elena again, or maybe that should be the new Elena, since old Elena was gone for good. It was time to say another goodbye to her, and to start living, and Damon was the one who was going to help her to do that. Elena had made one choice; her future lay with Damon.

 

Stefan had graduated from high school enough times. He didn’t know why he’d never decided to give college a try – maybe he would this time around, although maybe not the same place where Elena ended up going. Because she would go somewhere, Stefan believed that, even if she’d never managed to get her college applications sorted in time. 

He just had to decide where he was going to go after graduation, somewhere where he wouldn’t have to watch Damon and Elena together. Lexi was right; there were a million places he could go, and it was time to start living his life away from his brother and Elena. Matt had the right idea in getting out of Mystic Falls (Stefan was surprised about his choice of travelling companion, but it was up to Matt of course.) Maybe he’d go back to Mystic Falls again in something like the year 2100 when hopefully by that time he’d have moved on from Elena. Of course, the way his life usually went down, chances were they’d both have returned to Mystic Falls themselves from wherever they’d have disappeared to in the meantime.

The living in a yurt in Australia thing had been a joke, but Stefan would have to find somewhere to move on to. Maybe Australia might even be a feasible option, just not the yurt. It had the advantage of being further away than Portland, as he’d suggested to Lexi as a possible place he could go.

Damon was his brother, and it was Stefan’s fault that he’d ended up the way that he was. Now he had a chance to be happy, and Stefan owed that to him. And Stefan knew that Damon and Elena could be happier if he wasn’t constantly in the picture, reminding them of everything that had happened. He’d take a leaf out of Matt’s book, get the hell out of Dodge. The future was his to do what he wanted with.

A future that wouldn’t include Elena.

He knew that Lexi was probably right when she said that there could be any number of epic loves in a vampire’s life. (He knew of at least three of Lexi’s own from before he ever met her, after all, so she was obviously speaking from experience). But he also knew that it would be a long time he completely moved on from Elena, before he felt ready to start thinking about anyone else in that way again. Hopefully not as long as Damon had remained hung up on Katherine – no, he wouldn’t even go there. Thinking about Damon and Katherine reminded him of Damon and Elena all over again.

He just had one thing to do, then he could turn his back on Mystic Falls and everything that had happened. Stefan finally had the chance for a fresh start.

Except he didn’t.

The moment he realised that Silas wore his face, that he had returned following Bonnie’s death, that was the moment when Stefan realised that he had nowhere to go from here. He’d had so many options, but now all appeared lost to him.

 

_Where do we go from here?  
Where do we go from here? _


End file.
